Raeli gave me a beautiful piece of artwork – a sketch depicting our family in the Trojan War, playing Sparkly Monopoly, napping together (that is, me and the girls piled on top of each other reading books while their Daddy naps deeply beside us which is ENTIRELY ACCURATE), and a family portrait of us as fairies.

Lunch, some actual reading time (shock!) and I also probably spent more time than I should have working on a post about A Song of Ice and Fire. I got a single lovely child free hour thanks to my honey taking Jem for a walk to buy CAKE.

Jem went through a slightly frantic and stressful (for me) art period in the afternoon – MUST MAKE ART MUMMY – which involved clue and paper curls and cutting random bits of paper and oh gah, artistic children. Lovely but also messy and inconvenient. I am proud of her love of art but there are times when I just want her to go watch some nice tidy television instead.

But the really cool thing is that before dinner, my whole family gathered together and watched all 5 episodes of The Mind Robber (1968) with me! I’d always thought that the ‘books and fairy tales’ theme of this story would make it a Classic Who my girls were likely to enjoy despite the whole black and white thing, and I was right! Not only my three-year-old Hartnell fan Jem watched rapt but after one episode of casually playing Minecraft while glancing up occasionally, Raeli was hooked too.

It helped a lot that Raeli’s on a massive Greek Myths kick at the moment, so the guest appearances of the Minotaur and Medusa were a delight to her. Jem was quite freaked out by Jamie losing his face and being played by a guest actor (we’ve all been there, love) but adored the White Robots, and decided Zoe was the best. Hard to argue with that.

I love The Mind Robber so much. For years it was the only Troughton story I watched and rewatched regularly so apart from The War Games, most Troughton Doctor Who baffles me a bit because it’s not quite enough like The Mind Robber. But no other Doctor Who ever is anything like The Mind Robber! It’s all word games and riddles, Rapunzel and Karkus and the lovely, lovely Lemuel Gulliver. Also it’s gorgeous to look at, one of the prettiest and most dramatically-designed of the black and white episodes. I love nearly every frame, and it made me ridiculously happy that it kept my children entertained for two hours today.

Dinner was, as most of the dinners have been lately, a delicious thing from the new slow cooker I requested for Mother’s Day – we had chicken mini-roast with leeks that had been cooked for EIGHT HOURS, omg, leeks should always be cooked that way. And cake, of course, because that’s what birthdays are for.

At bedtime, Jem started crying because she hadn’t wrapped a present for me, and she had really wanted to. I tried convincing her that actually the lovely time we spent together all day counted for more than presents, but she countered with I WANTED TO WRAP SOMETHING and really, there’s no arguing against that. Eventually Raeli took her away and they wrapped up a plush purple octopus that I have owned for years. Problem solved!

Now the children are asleep and it’s Elementary and designer chocolate from my mother, and blogging. A lovely day.

Download or stream the episode here, or get it direct from iTunes.

Hugo Packet! What are YOU going to read? Would password protected freebie novels put you off reading them?

Locus Award finalists

Sturgeon finalists

Campbell Memorial Award finalists

Mythopoeic Award finalists

Nebula winners

Aurealis Awards winners

Comments: Tansy on “winning too many awards” & Keith Stevenson on why the awards are just fine and don’t need to be ‘sorted out’. To add some positivity (which more accurately reflects most people’s experience of this awards night!) check out Sean’s Storify of the AA’s night and Tehani’s post on attending at the last minute with lovely frockage pics. For even more gorgeous pictures, Cat Sparks’ Flickr feed is the way to go!

The coverflip experiment, started by Maureen Johnson’s piece on Huffington Post.

The artist behind the Georgette RR Martin cover discusses her imaginary brief.

Hawkeye Initiative Coda – using humour & art to get the gender point across in the workplace.

THE FIRST QUILT IN SPACE! Frontier craft for the final frontier.

Also, bye bye Commander Hadfield – thanks for bringing back the sense of wonder

The most significant futurists of the past 50 years

Tansy Melbourne public appearances to announce:

Sisters in Crime 14 June dinner & “in conversation with Livia Day, Josephine Pennicott & Poppy Gee”

Splendid Chaps 15 June – details tba, keep an eye on the Splendid Chaps website for booking details after the 23rd May.

Culture Consumed

ALISA: Star Trek Into Darkness

TANSY: Iron Man 3 FINISHED GAME OF THRONES BOOKS; Queers Dig Time Lords, 2 Minute Time Lord discussion with editors/contributors of QDTL

ALEX: Alanna, Tamora Pierce; The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

This decade – and in fact the entire period from 1990-2004 (with a brief holiday in 1996) is often referred to as ‘the Wilderness Years,’ coined by the team who worked on the eternal Doctor Who Magazine during this era and feel the need (quite rightfully) to point out their valiant efforts in maintaining a quality media tie in publication without a regular show to support. For more than a decade.

In truth, the 90’s were full of Doctor Who – just as the Target novelisations came to a natural end, the VHS releases of classic stories took off with a vengeance, bringing new audiences to old stories. The original series of adult New Adventures and Missing Adventures novels began in 1991 and produced an enormous quantity of stories over the next six years, only to be replaced by the similar-but-different BBC Book range of Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures which continued well into the new Millennium. There were comics and radio productions (okay not many, but some). Here in Australia we had even Doctor Who repeats on the ABC, often in the crazy early hours, which gave me the opportunity to see some Fifth and Sixth Doctor stories for the first time ever.

So yes, there was a lot happening with Doctor Who in this decade, but a lot of it hadn’t started yet in 1990. I freely admit that this at least was a Wilderness Year, though for many it wasn’t entirely clear that Doctor Who had in fact ended…

As it happens I have two 1990 issues of Doctor Who to hand and can give you the scoop on what (if anything) was going on with Doctor Who in the Wilderness Year. A time capsule into the past! (Cue wobbly wobbly flashback effect)

DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE No. 159 £1.50
April 1990
Cover: a photograph of Sophie Aldred, Sylvester McCoy and Nicholas Parsons in costume for The Curse of Fenric.
Cover Text: GRAPHIC NOVELS COMPETITION/FREE SEASON 26 GUIDE IN THIS ISSUE/PLUS: ANGELA BRUCE, DINSDALE LANDEN INTERVIEWED.
Editor: John Freeman.

Editorial: A response to Worlds of the Imperium, a book by Keith Laumer featuring the idea of time parallels, and a theory that not all Doctor Who adventures take place in the same continuity.

Gallifrey Guardian:

BBC DILLY DALLIES.
No final decision had been made on the future of Doctor Who at the beginning of February. The BBC are still keeping all options open in finding a format that will take Doctor Who into the Nineties and keep it going for the next ten years. Head of BBC Drama Serials Peter Cregeen’s only new comment on the future was “There will be more changes than people think…” Something to ponder. If the programme remains in-house production may start as early as July this year…

BEYOND THE TARDIS:

Jon Pertwee provides voices for the thirteen part series of SuperTed which began on BBC1 on January 8th.

Tom Baker has been busy recently, completing an interactive video for children on road safety for the Department of Transport, in addition to recording Hyperworld with Douglas Adams for the BBC. He’s also co-presenting Boom! A new Channel 4 magazine format series from Ragdoll productions.

Peter Davison’s second series of Campion began on January 12th on BBC 1.

Louise Jameson’s final Bergerac appearance was in the season opener on January 14th, when she was murdered in A True Detective.

Video View:

With an announcement still awaited on the future of Doctor Who, the BBC have at least scheduled the release of more of the Time Lord’s stories on video. Las month An Unearthly Child, the first ever Doctor Who story, and The War Games, Partick Troughton’s final regular story as the Second Doctor went on sale. This brings the total number of stories available on tape to fourteen.

Interview with Angela Bruce from Battlefield:

DWM: The Brigadier first appeared in 1968, twenty-one years ago. Can you see yourself coming back in 21 years time and playing Brigadier Bambera?
ANGELA: I’d love to, it’s such a hoot, especially to be paid to have so much fun! It was very professional, though… When Ben (Aaronovitch) wrote the character he made it so she could come back like Nick’s Brigadier.

Comic Strip: Train Flight Episode One – Sarah Jane Smith meets the Seventh Doctor! (She insists they take the tube instead of the TARDIS to the jazz concert they want to attend, and of course the train itself ends up hurtling through a space vortex…)

Letters Column, YOU ON WHO – mostly this month responding to a previous issue reporting that Terry Nation and Gerry Davis (creators of the Daleks and Cybermen respectively) were bidding to bring back Doctor Who as an American co-production.

“They say they want to maintain the ‘British flavour… but add the pace and action of American TV drama’,” writes Nathan Cooke of Fairfield, Stockton-on-Tees. “What does this mean? MacGyver in space with British accents?”

“An Anglo-American co-production is the worse (sic) that could happen,” writes Matthew McLean from Basingstoke. “Worse than complete cancellation.”

But wait, there’s more!

DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE No. 166 £1.50
October 1990
Cover: a glamour shot of Nicola Bryant
Cover Text: INSIDE: NICOLA BRYANT/ Making Mawdryn Undead/DERRICK SHERWIN ON U.N.I.T./CURSE OF FENRIC VIDEO COMPETITION INSIDE
Editor: John Freeman.

Editorial: How exactly does the Master fund all of his Earth invasions?
Gallifrey Guardian:

GRAHAM WILLIAMS DIES
Former Doctor Who producer Graham Williams died in August, the result of an accident at home. Graham produced Doctor Who from 1976 to 1979 and is perhaps best known for the introduction of the Doctor’s mechanical companion, K9. However, he also produced the Key to Time Season, the first with an overall theme, which saw the first appearance of th Black and White Guardian. He cast both versions of Romana – Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward – and,most importantly, he secured the continuation of the programme in the face of fierce criticism at its levels of violence and horror.

PROGRAMME’S FUTURE STILL UNDECIDED.
As DWM went to press at the beginning of September, we learnt that four drama series have definitely been commissioned by the BBC for 1990 production. None of these are Doctor Who. If a decision was not announced in September, sources close to the programme said “Start worrying.” Sylvester McCoy, speaking at the TARDISin Durham convention, said he’d been told the programme made over five million pounds a year for the BBC. “If this is true, someone should tell the BBC accountants how much they’re losing by not making the show,” he added. Doctor Who Appreciation Society officials said a letter writing campaign would be considered if a decision was delayed still further.

The Doctor Who office officially closed on August 31st and John Nathan-Turner ended his tenure as Producer on the same day.

Controversy Corner: Richard Landen talks about the shocking inconsistencies of Doctor Who canon found in Target novelisations as opposed to the broadcast TV episodes, and tries to use logic to compare ‘regeneration’ vs. ‘rejuvenation.’

A Violent End: DWM tracked down Nicola Bryant to find out how she’s found life after Who. Very well, it seems…

Comic Strip: Fellow Travellers Part 3, scripted by Andrew Cartmel.

Letters Column, YOU ON WHO:

“I hope the BBC will consider bringing back old foes in Season Twenty-Seven,” says Peter Webber of Exeter.

Meanwhile, sixteen-year-old Tony Darbyshire of Wigan complains at the ‘Nostalgia’ articles in the magazine being ageist, as his Doctor Who memories start with City of Death and he can’t be expected to know anything about the Hartnell, Troughton or Pertwee years. Ahhh, fan entitlement, don’t ever change.

ELSEWHERE ON 1990:

Sorry, I got nothing.

PREVIOUSLY:

Or check out my overviews of WHO-50 posts on Doctor Who in the 1960′s, the 1970′s and 1980′s.

Josephine Pennicott, Poppy Gee and Livia Day have all set their novels in the Apple Isle, but with different and fatal twists. Presented by Lindy Cameron, a Sisters in Crime National Co-convenor and author.

Sydney-based Josephine Pennicott is the author of three fantasy books and now Poet’s Cottage (Pan MacMillan), a mystery novel set in a Tasmanian sea-fishing village in the 1930s and present day. It was sold in a bidding war to Ullstein publishers (Germany), along with Currawong Manor, her current mystery-in-progress.

Poppy Gee, who was born in Launceston, spends every summer with her family at its shack in the Bay of Fires, also the title for her forthcoming debut novel (March, Hachette). The body of a backpacker washes ashore at the idyllic small town in Tasmania and the close-knit community starts to fall apart. As long-buried secrets start to come out, the delicate balance of their fragile lives is threatened. Poppy has nearly completed her next novel, another literary thriller set in the Tasmanian ski village Ben Lomond.

Livia Day has lived in Hobart for most of her life and A Trifle Dead (Deadlines/Twelfth Planet Press) is her first crime novel. The action revolves around Tabitha Darling who has always been a dab hand at pastry and a knack for getting into trouble – not a useful trait when she’s trying to run a hipster urban cafe?, invent the perfect trendy dessert, and stop feeding the many (oh so unfashionable) policemen in her life. It all goes pear-shaped when a dead muso is found in the flat upstairs. Livia fell in love with crime fiction at an early age.

DETAILS …
Venue: The Rising Sun Hotel (upstairs – no lift, cnr Raglan Street and Eastern Road South Melbourne)
Dinner: upstairs from 6.30pm (no need to book)
Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome
Sun Bookshop stall: members get 10% discount
Melways: map 57H2
Trams: 1, 55, 112 or St Kilda Road trams
Parking: free on-street parking after 6pm

www.sistersincrime.org.au

Some great results here, and congratulations to all the winners! Special congratulations to Margo Lanagan who had a great night, taking out four awards (each chosen by separate juries!) for Sea Hearts, “Bajazzle” and “Significant Dust.”

I have to say, I found it pretty tiring that so many people (including tons that I love and respect) started trotting out the jokes so early about Margo winning so many awards, or as the jokes implied, TOO many awards. (Note: the jokes started before her first win) It reminds me of the recent commentary about Hilary Mantel in the UK winning “all” the awards and not leaving any for anything else. The jokes might all have been intended as good-natured joshing, but it’s a disappointing aspect of Australian culture in particular that there is such a low ceiling to people (even friends) celebrating your success, before they turn around and start suggesting (in jest or otherwise) that it’s something you should be ashamed of.

Chances are pretty high that Margo found it as funny as anyone else there last night, but as an onlooker on the proceedings the sheer weight and number of those jokes flying thick and fast across Twitter did make me a bit uncomfortable.

Sometimes, as I tweeted last night, an author has a really spectacular year, and awards reflect that. Margo Lanagan is one of our best authors, who happens to have put out a fantastic novel AND a brilliant original collection in the same year, and I know she wasn’t taking those wins for granted.

Margo is aces & I love her as a person as well as for her writing, and I doubt very much she will ever have a night where she goes home with four trophies again, so let her enjoy it, eh?

This might be a good time to link to the article that reworks Helen Garner’s speech for the Stella Prize recently – about how awards can mess with your head as a writer, regardless of whether you win or don’t win.

And now, the Aurealis Award winners! A great range of works being honoured here, very much worthy of a ‘To Read’ list. Too many of the winners are my actual friends so I’ll just say congratulations to EVERYONE. Worth noting that there’s quite a spread of publishers being covered here, from old hands HarperCollins and Allen&Unwin to new kids on the block digital-only publisher Xoum and some Aussies published overseas with NightShade and Clarkesworld. Twelfth Planet Press flew the flag for Australian indie presses with three short stories honoured from two Twelve Planets collections, Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren and Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan. There was even a self-published winner with KJ Bishop’s collection – so, variety!

Check out the shortlist for some other amazing works.

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through words)
Brotherband: The Hunters by John Flanagan (Random House Australia)

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through pictures)
Little Elephants by Graeme Base (author and illustrator) (Viking Penguin)

YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY
“The Wisdom of the Ants” by Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld)

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL (tie)
Dead, Actually by Kaz Delaney (Allen & Unwin)
Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)

ILLUSTRATED BOOK / GRAPHIC NOVEL
Blue by Pat Grant (author and illustrator) (Top Shelf Comix)

COLLECTION
That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote by K. J. Bishop (self-­published)

ANTHOLOGY
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 6 edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books)

HORROR SHORT STORY
“Sky” by Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls, Twelfth Planet Press)

HORROR NOVEL
Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott (Xoum)

FANTASY SHORT STORY
“Bajazzle” by Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)

FANTASY NOVEL
Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)

SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY
“Significant Dust” by Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (Harper Collins)

PETER MCNAMARA CONVENOR’S AWARD
Kate Eltham

KRIS HEMBURY ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD
Laura Goodin

The Eighties was a turbulent time in Doctor Who, beginning with the cancellation of the part-filmed Shada, and ending with the hiatus and final “rest” of the show beloved by so many. The showman sensibilities of producer John Nathan-Turner meant some fantastic guest stars and overseas filming, and script editors Christopher Bidmead (science should not be silly), Eric Saward (if you’re going to have violent stories, let’s make them PROPERLY violent) and Andrew Cartmel (let’s show you just how sneaky and manipulative the Doctor has to be to save the universe) put their stamp on the show, as did the three actors who came in to play the Doctor in the wake of the iconic Tom Baker: Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy.

The Master turned up, and up, and up again, looking suspiciously like the last Master despite being played now by Anthony Ainley. Monsters came and went, and alien planets started to look like more than just the occasional quarry, thanks to some cheeky new special effects. Now they looked like pink

Companions came and went, too – mouthy Tegan the flight attendant wandered on board the TARDIS along with brainy space princess Nyssa and brainy-but-dense mathematical genius Adric. She then spent a year trying to get back to her job at Heathrow Airport only to find out it wasn’t what she was hoping for – but that was a better fate than that of Adric, who perished in a pointless task, far from home. Later, sinister schoolboy-in-exile Turlough joined the Doctor and Tegan after only a few half-hearted attempts on the Doctor’s life, and they were briefly joined by Kamelion the shape-changing robot – if you blinked, you missed him.

Peri Brown replaced Turlough in the Doctor’s life, wearing a succession of tiny outfits as the lovely ‘sweet’ Doctor vanished unexpectedly, to be replaced with a bombastic bully who made her life mostly miserable – though she rallied above the verbal abuse to sling it back at him, and was eventually allowed to wear grown up clothes as the Doctor and the show were both put on trial…

Computer programmer and gym bunny Mel Bush turned up just in time to bring a lighter touch to the show, even if the showrunner seemed to value her mostly for her ability to scream in the same key as the musical sting that heralded the closing credits. And finally we had Ace, an entirely alien version of what teenage girls were actually like in the 1980′s… but adorably enthusiastic not only about adventures with the Doctor but also about blowing shit up.

They walked off into the sunset as the show came to an end… but oh, it wasn’t an end at all. The new beginning, away from the small screen, was just around the corner…

For more WHO-50 goodness, check out The Seventies and The Sixties.

I have a horrible feeling that I have been, more than once, that gabbling friend trying to give helpful advice about a thing I know nothing about – and this post brought home exactly how little I know about this particular type of mental illness despite having many friends who have suffered from it in their lives. As with all great writing, this piece made me think differently about myself and the universe. Also, it’s horribly hilarious. Highly recommended, and I’m so glad to see H&aH back.

This sweet story is about a mother who decided to go beyond the ‘princess’ motif for her daughter’s fifth birthday commemorative photo, and dressed her up as a selection of feminist historical heroines.

A nice coda to the Hawkeye Initiative – how the genderflipping art project inspired an employee at a gaming company to take a stand and communicate a problem to her boss in a creative, classy way.

How Muriel Spark Saved Mary Shelley – the fascinating story of how “the canon” of literature really can be changed. Because, you know, it’s all about perception of value.

Nev Fountain, one of my favourite writers of Big Finish Audios, dissects The Doctor Who Historical as a sub-genre – what makes them great fun, and how to take apart their traditions when writing them. If you haven’t listened to his take on the Richard III mythology in The Kingmaker, you’re missing out.

Actor Gemma Arteton, whose mother sounds pretty hardcore awesome, talks about her current film projects, and particularly the female writers and directors she is currently working with. A smart lady! I love hearing stories about the women in today’s entertainment industry taking control of their careers and demanding higher standards in order to produce better, more interesting work.

Speaking of women in the entertainment industry taking control, The Hathor Legacy looks at some of the commentary surrounding Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a preventative mastectomy, and the appalling attitudes expressed by people who simply can’t comprehend the idea that a woman might be able to make an intelligent decision about her own future health, regardless of how complete strangers feel about her breasts. Jolie’s original piece, tellingly titled “My Medical Choice” is definitely worth reading in full, if only because it is so thorough and educational.

“My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”

The Women Aren’t Funny series of posts at Bitch Magazine continue to be entertaining and interesting – the latest one is about How Women-Only Spaces Break Up The Boys Club.

The Jane Dough presents: What Alanna of Trebond taught me about my career. Ohhh, I feel a Tamora Pierce reread coming on…

The Angriest presents some very pretty statistics about Doctor Who’s viewing figures since 2005. They have been remarkably steady! Stop panicking, you guys.

“Turn Left”
Series 4, Episode 11
THE DOCTOR – David Tennant
DONNA – Catherine Tate
ROSE – Billie Piper
WILF – Bernard Cribbins
SYLVIA – Jacqueline King

TEHANI:

So here we are at “Turn Left”, the only other Hugo nominated episode from this season, which I think is a bit sad because the Doctor/Donna season is one of my favourites. We just passed “Midnight”, which despite being Donna-lite, is really rather exceptional, I thought. Certainly one of the creepier episodes, with a good hard look at human nature (and, weirdly, it reminds me of how reality tv shows work, when they shove a bunch of strangers into a small space and see what happens). Lesley Sharp as Sky Silvestry is really quite marvellous, doing some incredible dialogue with Tennant. And of course we get a bonus fandom points with Colin Morgan (Merlin) as Jethro and David Troughton (yes, Patrick Troughton’s son!) as Professor Hobbes.

TANSY:

I think that “Midnight” was definitely worth a nomination, though possibly not at the expense of the two stories picked – what, we couldn’t get our usual three spots for the Hugo Ballot?? I also think it’s RTD writing at his best. It feels like that is the one where he is trying least hard to impress us all with showiness and grandeur, and the small scale of the production combined with bang-up performances and script was really very effective. Seeing Merlin with cool hair is quite personally distressing to me.

DAVID:

It’s definitely a strong ending to the season! Was RTD (Russell T Davies) still the showrunner at this point, or did he have more editorial constraints? “Midnight” was a wonderfully claustrophobic episode, with some excellent performances, though I thought that the speed with which they turned on Sky was a little convenient. I was a little in awe of Lesley Sharp’s performance, that dialogue must have been terribly difficult!

TANSY:

He was still the showrunner – and I’m glad he chose now to remind everyone that he is in fact a kick ass, world class scriptwriter. Sometimes.

TEHANI:

As “Midnight” was Donna-lite, “Turn Left” is Doctor-lite, which I think is really interesting – the same as “Blink” made the Hugo-voters take notice, another fairly Tennant-less episode made the grade here (although unlike “Blink”, it didn’t get the gong that year, losing to Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog). But I wonder how much of the vote was for Catherine Tate’s fabulous portrayal of Donna, and how much was for the fact of Rose? I want to hope it was for Donna, but you never know.

TANSY:

I don’t think it’s necessarily the lack of Tennant that made this episode or indeed “Blink” particularly good, but the ones that Hugo nominators tend to notice are often those that break the mould or formula in some way.

Xena is the only other show I watched obsessively that had a similarly small ensemble (two main characters, rotating but no other regular support characters) and therefore had to do Protagonist-Lite episodes, both for Xena and Gabrielle. And while they often had brilliant material together, it was when one of them was gone that the scriptwriters really had to pull out all the stops because so much of their regular toolbox (and the reliable chemistry between the two actors) was missing. I could easily assemble a list of more than a dozen wonderful episodes of Xena which only featured one of the main leads, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that the episodes lacking the Doctor, the companion or both of them tend to be exceptional or at least very memorable.

I do think that it is very possible to tell a story entirely about the Doctor without showing him on screen, and that’s very much what we’re getting here. The story is absolutely a showcase for Catherine Tate, and one in the eye for anyone who thought she couldn’t cut it as a dramatic actress, but it’s also a story of a world without the Doctor, and what that might look like.

DAVID:

Catherine Tate is simply amazing in this. She is such a natural comedian that I think it can be easy to overlook her dramatic skills, but here she has a chance to show us what she is really made of, and hits it out of the park. The way that RTD explores her family dynamics provides some genuinely moving moments, and gives us a real insight into how her and her mother interact, in particular. Though, Bernard Cribbins is his usual excellent self!

TANSY:

Sylvia is marvellous too – some great character growth for all of them. And I think it’s really essential to look at this family and see how they cope with horrible, life-changing circumstances without a bloke in his magic box – they’re not fine but they are surviving and all of them pull together. Wilf’s wartime spirit and Sylvia’s slow acceptance of their situation are both conveyed very well and most of all we see how resilient Donna is.

DAVID:

In this Doctor Who version of It’s a Wonderful Life, we get a convincing alternate world and see just how much impact the Doctor has in even that short period of time. I really liked how we see that there are people who still step up to try and save the world, but that the cost is so much higher without the Doctor there. But, as much as we see the importance of the Doctor, it’s even more fascinating to see how important Donna is. Right throughout Doctor Who the companions make much more difference than they realise, they aren’t just hangers on or a support act to the Doctor, and this is a great example of why.

TEHANI:

Okay, so I know I’m not the best judge of this, but I DO listen when other people discuss this stuff – am I right in thinking that New Who does this FAR better than Classic Who did? The companions are almost always shown to be really important, whether they actively save the day, or are just the moral compass that is there with the Doctor. And I don’t think this was as evident in Classic Who.

TANSY:
While I am an active defender of the companions of Classic Who, it’s true that the narrative of the show rarely gave them the kind of agency we get in New Who – while there were companions who were allowed actual growth and change through their run, you often get the impression that when it happened it was half accidental and half down to the actor in question portraying that despite the scripts. Very few of them got a) consistent, detailed backstory, b) family and friends back home, c) a coherent story arc or d) a leaving story worthy of them, and certainly few of them got more than one or two of those elements.

Even Ace, who was the last proper companion of Classic Who and is often held up as a forerunner to Rose (in all but the romantic aspect) was not given the same ‘protagonist here, coming through’ central role that Billie Piper’s character and her successors had.

Having said all that, one of the best examples of character development and the companions driving the plot comes with Ian and Barbara at the very beginning of the show, so you could argue that New Who is building upon something that was an essential element of the original 1960’s Doctor Who. At least, I would argue that!

RTD’s era of the show certainly pushes the idea that being around the Doctor turns ordinary people into heroes, but “Turn Left” goes one better by showing they can do that without him, too.

DAVID:

I largely agree with Tansy’s argument here, however I think you can point to a number of examples of how being around the Doctor pushed some of the Classic Companions into far more heroic roles. Romana played a major part in many of her stories, though it could be argued that she developed more in the tie in novels, as did Sarah Jane who, as we know, went off to be the star of her own show. And of course, Adric died saving the Earth (I think he is a vastly underrated companion, and one of the reasons I was disappointed that they didn’t persevere with Adam Mitchell).

Funnily enough, when it comes to one of the characters given the most interesting backstory you can hardly claim that it was intended all along – I am sure that Turlough’s revelations were written on the fly! [Tansy wrote a great article about this.]

But, it was far from the deliberate writing of arcs that we saw in New Who, which probably has as much to do with the changing nature of television as Doctor Who itself. The fact that you have to search for those examples, and that they are far less involved than almost every companion in New Who backs up Tansy’s argument.

The big thing with Classic Who was the secondary character dying a noble death. It was pretty much a given, if you started to like one of the supporting acts or there was a complex, interesting character, their days were numbered and they would likely die in the last ditch effort to foil whatever end of the world event was in progress.

I much preferred this Rose. She has such a great sense of purpose, and helps set up the finale so very well. There is an ominous feel to her appearances, especially when she says “I am so sorry”, always a scary thing to hear in Doctor Who! And the scene at the end with the “Bad Wolf” stuff – spectacular!

TANSY:

I actually really like Rose’s return in this season too, especially in this episode. The fact that she is there instead of the Doctor to point the way for Donna is pretty exceptional, and I like how tough and competent she is now. She’s all grown up!

It’s also quite nice to see her being awesome even when the Doctor isn’t around – there’s a kind of double theme going on with the various returns of companions in this season, which is that 1) the companions do much of their “levelling up” after parting company with the Doctor and 2) he doesn’t always like what they turn into when he’s not around to influence them. In this case Rose doesn’t meet the Doctor at all, so we don’t have to deal with that second part of it.

TEHANI:

I definitely liked Rose better in this than I did in her actual run. Possibly it’s actually due (in part at least) to an improvement in Billie Piper’s acting *ducks for cover* but I think it’s mostly because she’s a proactive player in the story, and I liked that.

DAVID:

That’s it, isn’t it? These are the companions who have left the nest and gone out on their own, who have grown up. And, like any parent, sometimes the Doctor struggles with the idea that they aren’t his “children” anymore!

TEHANI:

What did we think about the back bug thing? I’m still not sure I completely understand how that one works – do I need to employ hand-wavery?

TANSY:

I loved the concept – not only did the creepy ‘something on your back’ remind me of the Spiders, my favourite Classic Who monster, but I think it’s also quite clever – basically a time parasite that also works as a fairy tale concept? So it allows/forces a person to make a different life choice back in their timeline, and feeds on the resulting energy, which makes it similar to the Weeping Angels, actually.

DAVID:

I found the parasite very creepy! I remember walking through a web in the dark once and not realising for quite awhile that I now had a passenger in the form of a massive orb spider on my back. So, a bit too close to home. *shudder*

It was probably a bit more effective when we only saw glimpses, but lots of monsters are like that. I do agree, the concept of a time parasite is quite clever. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of time having its own ecosystem and would love to see it explored a bit more. We had the Chronovores in Classic Who, and I am trying to think of a few more examples – I am sure there must be!

TANSY:

There were the Reapers in “Father’s Day” that turned up to ‘sterilise the wound in time’ – but my favourite example of this is the vortisaurs in Big Finish – like time pterodactyls that live in the time vortex! But I agree, this is a great idea that perhaps has a lot more potential to be re-used in the future. The Doctor may be ‘Time’s Champion’ but you can see how anyone with a greater understanding to time might see him as more of a vandal and saboteur…

TEHANI

Ooh, and Tansy, MARKETPLACE! That’s what I kept thinking of when the Verity! podcast team were discussing “The Rings of Akhaten” a few weeks ago! (sorry David, no other talking about things you haven’t seen yet!)

TANSY:

Yes, this is the closest thing we get to a space marketplace before that episode we’re not going to discuss – though as I recall it caused a few eyebrows to go up because of the racial stereotyping. On the one hand it’s quite nice to arrive on a planet which isn’t defaulting to white or Anglo culture, on the other hand it does feel a touch like wandering through a pantomime of Aladdin. (we totally went to a small town pantomime of Aladdin the Christmas before last and omg it was DEEPLY uncomfortable, I was squirming as I watched a bunch of white Aussie kids in yellowface making chop suey jokes and all I could think over and over again was “I am so glad the internet is not in this audience”.)

At least they did cast actual Asian actors. So there’s that. And the marketplace is a tiny, discrete bit of this episode, so you can (I think) enjoy the story regardless. The actual performance of Tennant and Tate wandering through the space market is pretty awesome, though it’s not my FAVOURITE market wandering scene in this season which is of course back in “The Fires of Pompeii”.

DAVID:

I am afraid I am going to put my name down in the unimpressed camp here. I remember when I watched it wondering if there was any sort of controversy over it, because I found it very stereotypical. Not so much the market itself, but the scenes inside the tent seemed very heavy handed to me. Not “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” bad, though, but hopefully we are setting a higher bar than that!

TANSY:

Yep sadly ‘slightly less racist than “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”’ is not something anyone would want on their CV.

TANSYEDIT: To be completely fair, the show also makes some important commentary on racism in this episode, with the appalling treatment of immigrants in time of national crisis, and the scene where the lovable Italians they share a house with are taken off to ‘work camps’ which is pretty damned chilling.

DAVID:

Overall, though, I think RTD has delivered a stand out episode here, and one that sets us up for a stunning finale…

TEHANI:

I think you’re right – loved the focus on Donna, really enjoyed Rose this time around, and yes, “stunning” (in all its connotations) is one word for what comes next…

PREVIOUS “New Who In Conversations”

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion,” S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

“The Runaway Bride”, 2006 Christmas Special
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
The Shakespeare Code & Gridlock, S0302-03
Human Nature/The Family of Blood S0308-09
Blink S0310
Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelords S0311-13
“Voyage of the Damned,” 2007 Christmas Special
Season 3 Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

Partners in Crime, S0401
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S0405 S0406
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S0408 S0409

This is hardly surprising, as McCoy’s Doctor and Ace’s character were not just central to the last “proper” run of the show, but also remained the focus of fan and pro creativity for many years in the decade that followed, and many of the fans, pros and fannish pros who were part of that world were themselves involved in the return of the show.

Ace is not Rose, not by a long shot, but there are many elements of her character that demonstrate her influence over the creation of Rose, and why RTD might have thought that the returning show should revolve around the family, angst and narrative of a working class teenage girl.

Ace also has a lot in common with Clara, the current companion that we are only just beginning to parse – because she wasn’t just a key point of view character for the audience, she was also revealed to be a mystery for the Doctor to solve.

This wasn’t quite true from the start – there was nothing especially mysterious about Ace in her very first story, Dragonfire. Sure, her origin story (I blew up the art room with homemade explosives, caught a passing “time storm” and ended up on another planet) makes no sense at all, but the Doctor did not reveal that he was taking an interest in her for anything other than the usual reason – Mel was moving on, Ace was a chirpy girl who looked like she might be handy to have along on adventures. Job done.

But over the next two years, it became clear that there was a mystery. Indeed, there were two layers of mystery to Ace and her origins. One was plot-derived – in The Curse of Fenric it was revealed that Ace was one of many humans descended from a Viking influenced by the evil Fenric, and thus was one of his ‘wolves.’ Unlike the other Wolves of Fenric we meet, however, she is not easily manipulated (except by the Doctor) and proves to be Fenric’s undoing.

All that plotty stuff is rather complex and clever, but it doesn’t directly affect on the other stories that depict Ace’s relationship with the Doctor as Mystery and Detective. The revelation that the Doctor has known this about her all along adds a certain frisson to some of their other confrontations, but much is still left unsaid.

Still, it seems clear that Ace herself (not just the potential pawn of Fenric) is the mystery that the Doctor wants to unravel and solve. Many of her stories, especially those that screened in 1989, show the Doctor manipulating Ace via the TARDIS into facing her fears, the ghosts from her past, and other personal issues.

Only one story of 1989, Battlefield, addresses the Doctor’s own mysterious past (and future), setting him up as Merlin to an intergalactic Arthurian legend – and at the same time setting Ace up as his own Arthur, the hero who draws the sword from the stone and inherits a kingdom thanks to the machinations of guess who? The remaining three stories of this season very much follow the pattern of the Doctor digging away at some key issue in Ace’s psyche, revealing that he knows more than he should about her past, and her potential.

In Ghost Light, the Doctor takes Ace back to Perivale, the London suburb she comes from (and loathes). Quite specifically, he takes her to a beautiful, gothic and scary house that represents the central focus of her teenage anger – in her past and the house’s future, she had burned it to the ground after her friend Manisha’s flat was subject to racist firebombing.

In The Curse of Fenric, Ace not only learns of of her connectios to the sinister and evil villain of the piece, but also comes face to face with the mother she hates, here an innocent baby.

Finally, in Survival, the last of the classic run, the Doctor actually takes Ace back to her home of Perivale in the present day, a few months after she left. Disappointingly, we don’t meet her mother (which feels like a major omission considering how she looms so large in Ace’s unhappiness about herself and her life) but we do see something of the impact Ace’s disappearance has had on her community.

Given that the Fenric aspect had already been resolved, the only reason that the Doctor continued with his quest to make Ace examine many of her sources for personal angst must be because it was the mystery of HER and not Fenric that he was interested in – how humans tick, how they can be broken and mended. It’s an emotional, rather than plot-driven arc, highly unusual for Doctor Who in the 1980′s or indeed prior to 1996.

Here we are in 2013, though, and the Doctor is at it again, scratching away at Clara in the hope of finding out what makes her tick – possibly not because of massive, universe-altering ramifications, but simply because she represents a previously unseen facet of humanity, “the only mystery worth solving.”

Let’s hope they can resolve the matter without burning down any buildings.

“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace — we’ve got work to do!”

ELSEWHERE ON 1989

Battlefield and the Woman Warrior [Doctor Her]

“She Vanquished Me” – Doctor Who: Battlefield [TansyRR.com]

Battlefield [Wife in Space]

Ghost Light [Wife in Space]

Female Power and the Curse of Fenric [TansyRR at Doctor Her]

Lucky Number Seven – Curse of Fenric [NeoWhovian]

All Seven and We Watch Ace Fall – Curse of Fenric [Verity! Podcast]

Survival [Wife in Space]

The Tea is Getting Cold [Tor.com]

The Many Futures of Ace McShane [TansyRR at Doctor Her]

PREVIOUSLY:

The big talking point on social media this week is Maureen Johnson’s piece in the Huffington Post about gendered book covers, along with a highly entertaining challenge to genderflip covers from one ‘author’ to another and see what difference it makes.

May the 4th (be with you) brought its usual slew of Star Wars posts, some good, many bad or boring. But I did enjoy this piece about Leigh Brackett, and how her pulp SF fantasy writing (and not her long history of excellent screenwriting) led to her writing a draft of the much celebrated middle film, The Empire Strikes Back.

Bitch Magazine looked at how F. Scott Fitzgerald (and thus The Great Gatsby, and thus all the film versions of The Great Gatsby) completely missed the point of flappers.

My favourite new blog, A Song of Ice and Attire, looks closely at the costume choices of the female characters in Game of Thrones, and all the clever subtext that they convey. It’s brilliant stuff, and makes me look at the designers of the show in a whole new light.

Speaking of A Game of Thrones, what’s going on with the accents in that show? Gawker tries to explain it.

So what exactly are Kindle Singles anyway, and why are they so popular? The New York Times profiles the range, and looks at why it works for Amazon and for the writers involved.

Publishers Weekly looks at how graphic novels went from being ignored by libraries to being their hottest and most checked-out properties.

Deb Biancotti runs through her planning and performance for this year’s Ditmar Awards, with a whole bunch of advice for people running future awards ceremonies in fandom. Great stuff, I wish I had been there!